Jason Aldean performs onstage at Country Thunder Wisconsin – Day 3 on July 22, 2023, in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. | Source: Joshua Applegate / Getty
Perhaps it’s because Jason Aldean grew tired of being dragged up and down social media the way his “Try That In A Small Town” song suggests he’d like to drag a Black man from the bumper of his pickup truck that Black Lives Matter-related protest footage was quietly and mysteriously edited out of the controversial video. It seems unlikely though since MAGA World has basically knighted him for the American flag-heavy (and lynching vibes-heavier) video, and, in general, the song and video have upgraded him to Jason Aldean from—”Who TF is Jason Aldean?”
But according to the Washington Post, the video is now six seconds shorter than it was when it was uploaded to YouTube on July 14, and what’s missing is a news clip from Fox 5 Atlanta depicting violence during the wave of anti-police racism protests that happened in 2020.
From the Post:
Portions of that clip appeared twice in the original music video, at one point projected onto the exterior wall of a Tennessee county courthouse where a Black teen was lynched in the 1920s, which Aldean used as a backdrop as he sang about crimes that would not be tolerated in a small town.
It’s unclear when exactly the video was edited, though numerous changes appear to have been made since last week, when it attracted widespread criticism for contrasting images of violent protests and riots with lyrics such as: “Try that in a small town/ See how far ya make it down the road/ Around here, we take care of our own.”
Aldean—who, but the way, was born and raised in Macon, Georgia, which has a current population of nearly 160,000 and a population that hovered around 100,000 in 1990 (so, yeah, not a small town)—has spent more than a week vehemently defending his ode to redneck Batman activities against allegations of racism, so, again, it’s strange that he would even bother making the decision to edit it now.
In fact, on Friday, he was still defending the video during a concert in Cincinnati, Ohio.
“I feel like everybody’s entitled to their opinion. You can think, you can think something all you want to, it doesn’t mean it’s true, right?” Aldean asked his fans from the stage. “Somebody asked me, ‘Hey man, do you think you’re going to play this song tonight?’ The answer was simple. The people have spoken and you guys spoke very, very loudly this week.”
Yes, and any fans of the second coming of Kid Rock and the third coming of Ted Nugent were likely thrilled to see anti-BLM propaganda flashing across their Klan-friendly screens. That’s why it just seems pretty doubtful that Aldean himself edited the video. Even if this was all just a big publicity stunt, why remove parts of the video that gained it so much publicity?
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter why Aldean’s video went from racist to slightly less racist in the blink of an eye. As far as most Black people and progressives are concerned, the damage is already done and we just really don’t like this guy we just found out existed a week ago.
Too little, too late, basically.
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